Salim el-Sayegh, member of the Kataeb parliamentary bloc, said on Friday that “the Israeli attack on the southern suburbs is tantamount to an attack on Tehran itself,” in reference to the assassination of Hamas’ second-in-command, Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on Tuesday.
In an interview with Al-Hadath TV, Sayegh said that “it is Iran that is speaking out on the great regional equation, and not Hassan Nasrallah,” the Secretary General of Hezbollah. In his view, Israel had discredited “Hezbollah’s strategy of deterrence” by attacking “the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are part of the security base most strongly reinforced by Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”
In this context, he pointed out that the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri “falls within the context of the eliminations (of Hamas leaders) announced by Israel” and is therefore aimed at “neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese state.”
In response to a question about Iran’s desire to widen the conflict in the region, Sayegh explained that the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, had been working “from the very first hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, to delimit the framework of this conflict.”
He mentioned that Abdollahian had continuously sought direct diplomatic dialogue with the United States or indirect dialogue through fueling conflicts to assert Iran’s dominance in these crises.
Finally, the Kataeb MP considered that the obstacle hindering the resolution of all issues in the region is the lack of serious communication with Iran, whether on its nuclear file or regional matters.
